Observing and producing pitch gestures facilitates the learning of Mandarin chinese tones and words
Autor: | Pilar Prieto, Santiago González-Fuente, Florence Baills, Nerea Suárez-González |
---|---|
Jazyk: | angličtina |
Rok vydání: | 2019 |
Předmět: |
Auditory perception
050101 languages & linguistics Linguistics and Language Computer science Speech recognition 05 social sciences Intonation (linguistics) Tone (linguistics) Pronunciation Mandarin Chinese 050105 experimental psychology Language and Linguistics language.human_language Vocabulary development Education Nonverbal communication language 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Gesture |
Popis: | This study investigates the perception and production of a specific type of metaphoric gesture that mimics melody in speech, also called pitch gesture, in the learning of L2 suprasegmental features. In a between-subjects design, a total of 106 participants with no previous knowledge of Chinese were asked to observe (Experiment 1) and produce (Experiment 2) pitch gestures during a short multimodal training session on Chinese tones and words. In both experiments they were tested on (a) tone identification and (b) word learning. Results showed the positive effect of a training session with pitch gesture observation compared to a training session without it (Experiment 1) and the benefits of producing gestures compared to only observing them and repeating the words aloud (Experiment 2). A comparison of the results of the two experiments revealed that there was no significant difference between the simple observation of pitch gestures and the production of speech accompanied by pitch gestures in facilitating lexical tone identification and word learning. Thus, both perception and production tasks with pitch gestures can be regarded as beneficial learning strategies for the initial stages of tones acquisition in the Chinese as a Second Language classroom. This research has been funded by two research grants awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2015-66533-P) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2014 SGR-925), both to the Prosodic Studies Group. The first author has a predoctoral research grant awarded by the Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The third author also acknowledges a FPU 2012-05893 grant awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
Externí odkaz: |